SPECIAL COURT FOR OUTREACH AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE

Outreach Officer Mohamed Kargbo addressing an audience at Mathirie, Koya Chiefdom on the day of the Taylor judgment

PRESS CLIPPINGS

Enclosed are clippings of local and international press on the Special Court and related issues obtained by the Outreach and Public Affairs Office as at: Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Press clips are produced Monday through Friday. Any omission, comment or suggestion, please contact Martin Royston-Wright Ext 7217 2

Local News

US Welcomes Taylor Verdict / Premier News Page 3

CARL Urges Government to Improve Social and Economic…/ Premier News Page 4

Lessons for African Leaders / Salone Times Pages 5-6

Justice Minister Lauds Special Court / The Exclusive Page 7

Taylor’s Lawyer Blasts / The Exclusive Page 8

Charles Taylor: Sierra Leone’s Scapegoat / Awareness Times Page 9

The Charles Taylor War Shattered the Lives of My Generation / Standard Times Page 10

Reaction to the Conviction of Charles Taylor in The Hague…/ Sierra Leone Policy Watch Page 11

International News

Charles Taylor Trial Highlights ICC Concerns / Aljazeera Pages 12-14

Victor's Justice: What's Wrong With Warlord Charles Taylor's Conviction / The Atlantic Pages 15-16

Former Prosecutor Hails Charles Taylor Guilty Verdict / Los Angeles Times Pages 17-18

Liberia: Moses Blah Cries Over Taylor's Guilty Verdict / Heritage Page 19

Blah Bites Tongue: “I Was Forced to Testify” / The New Dawn Page 20

Taylor Trial a Threat to Africa: Family Spokesman / Angola Press Page 21

Jury Still out on International War Crimes System / Angola Press Page 22

The Tenacious Pursuit of War Crimes and a War Criminal / The Seattle Times Page 23

Africa: On the Charles Taylor Verdict - Is There Justice in Africa? / AllAfrica.Com Pages 24-26

Moses Blah on the Judgement of Charles Taylor / BBC Focus on Africa Page 27

3 Premier News Wednesday, 2 May 2012

4 Premier News Wednesday, 2 May 2012

5 Salone Times Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Lessons for African Leaders

6

7 The Exclusive Wednesday, 2 May 2012

8 The Exclusive Wednesday, 2 May 2012

9 Awareness Times Wednesday, 2 May 2012

10 Standard Times Wednesday, 2 May 2012

11 Sierra Leone Policy Watch Thursday, 26 April 2012

Reaction of Sierra Leone Policy Watch Inc. to the conviction of Charles Taylor in The Hague for war crimes against the People of Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone Policy Watch Inc. welcomes the conviction of Charles Taylor today in The Hague for aiding and abetting atrocities in our beloved country Sierra Leone. We consider this as the first chapter in delivering a measure of justice for the many victims of Charles Taylor’s war crimes against our people. We thank the international community for all their efforts in making this happen. We implore the international community to please remember that the scars of his horrendous acts are still visible in every village and on every street in Sierra Leone, we must not forget the victims.

Therefore the second phase should be reasonable reparation for the victims, taken from the assets left behind by Charles Taylor and those who financed his atrocities to provide support for the Government and people of Sierra Leone to help provide basic public services in our effort to rebuild the country.

Jesmed F Suma Executive Director Sierra Leone Policy Watch Inc. 12 Aljazeera Friday, 27 April 2012 Opinion

Charles Taylor trial highlights ICC concerns

A milestone in international justice also highlights the Court's need to maintain its legitimacy.

Oxford, United Kingdom - After a long and expensive trial, the Special Court for Sierra Leone finally pronounced that former Liberian president Charles Taylor is guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes.

While there has been little doubt that Taylor commanded militia that were responsible for some horrific acts of violence in , his home country, this judgment considered the extent to which he should be held responsible for ordering and condoning various war crimes (including murder, sexual violence, and enslavement) which were committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He has been acquitted of ordering these crimes and atrocities with the court finding that he did not hold direct command and control responsibility, but he has been found guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes.

Among Western governments and their publics, there is widespread agreement that prosecuting Taylor has been the right and proper thing to do. The West considers the Special Court for Sierra Leone as upholding human rights and bringing justice to bear on a brutal dictator. Yet even though these claims undoubtedly have merit, it would be naïve to think that international justice is being pursued purely for its own sake.

It seems particularly important to acknowledge that justice, especially international justice in the context of war crimes, can never be completely isolated from its broader social and political context - no matter how hard we try to separate the two. The prosecution of Charles Taylor is no exception. 13

Those who are cynical about prosecuting war crimes at the international level will first point out that the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been backed and financed by the West (primarily the US, UK, Netherlands, and Canada). For Westerners who are accustomed to impartial judicial systems, this is an irrelevant fact: Justice is justice no matter who is paying for it.

To the rest of the world, however, there is much greater variation in judicial norms, and the fact that the trial has been funded by Western powers is significant. It will also not escape unnoticed that this trial conveniently helped the US and UK achieve an important geopolitical goal: the removal of Charles Taylor from West African soil at a fragile moment in Liberia's post-conflict recovery in 2006.

Destabilising force

In 2003, when the indictment was first announced, Charles Taylor was a major destabilising force in West Africa. Aside from instigating civil war in Liberia and financing the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone, Taylor had also managed to draw Guinea and into border wars. Removing him from Liberia was the first of many steps towards restoring peace in the country and establishing peaceful relations with neighbouring countries. For the West, it was clear that Taylor had to go and he should not be allowed to return.

Indeed, Taylor's lawyers have pointed to a 2009 US diplomatic cable from former US Ambassador to Liberia Linda Thomas-Greenfield which stated that if the Special Court were to acquit Charles Taylor, or even to hand him a light sentence, he would be in a position to jeopardise Liberia's stability.

Thomas-Greenfield states: "The best we can do for Liberia is to see to it that Taylor is put away for a long time." She goes on to argue that the US should not wait for the Special Court's verdict and that "all legal options should be studied to ensure that Taylor cannot return to destabilise Liberia". In all likelihood then, even if Taylor were acquitted, it seems likely that the US would have been be set to charge him with financial crimes.

Clearly, the US wants to see Taylor locked up for as long as possible. But the wording of the cable is equally clear that the Special Court's verdict remained uncertain at that time. While the outcome was far from pre-ordained, it does lead one to worry about how this strength of sentiment from the court's most important financial backer might indirectly affect the case.

Fundamentally though, the core concern is not with judges' independence. The intensity of public scrutiny and the reputational risks to those who compromise their integrity provide strong incentives for judges to guard their independence. No, the greater worry concerns the choice of cases that international prosecutors decide to pursue in the first place.

The role of the ICC

Turning to the International Criminal Court, a brief look at those who have been indicted reveals that to date, the vast majority have been from sub-Saharan Africa, and the remaining few are from , also on the African continent. While armed conflict has been more prevalent in Africa than in other parts of the world over the past decade, African leaders certainly do not hold a monopoly on the commission of war crimes.

Courts build their legitimacy partly based on the cases that they choose to hear. By focusing predominantly on Africans, there is a real worry that the ICC will be perceived by non-Western countries as providing a cloak of legitimacy for the US and other Western nations to achieve their political aims - despite the fact that the ICC's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has explicitly stated that the ICC is not a court "just for the Third World". 14

What the international community needs to guard against is allowing the ICC to become a tool that Western liberal democracies can impose on developing country leaders who have fallen out of political favour. For the ICC to remain viable, it also cannot be perceived as the backdoor by which Western powers target their political enemies.

All of this takes us back to Charles Taylor. Make no mistake: few will be sorry to see him locked up. But Taylor's case does highlight concerns about the political expediency factor and the degree to which it can be exploited. For countries such as the US, China, and India who worry about the politicisation of the Office of the Prosecutor, and, by extension, the politicisation of the ICC, this case will only confirm that their misgivings were justified.

For the rest of us though, the conclusion of the Taylor's trial represents a major milestone in the pursuit of international justice.

Dr Christine Cheng is the Boskey Fellow in Politics at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She co- edited Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Routledge) and is currently writing a book about Liberia’s post-conflict transition. She blogs at www.christinescottcheng.wordpress.com.

This article has been updated since the verdict against Charles Taylor was announced.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

15 The Atlantic Monday, 30 April 2012

Victor's Justice: What's Wrong With Warlord Charles Taylor's Conviction

By Chris Mahony

Critics of the International Criminal Court often complain that it only targets abusive African leaders. But the truth is that the international justice system is inconsistent and arbitrary inside of Africa as well as outside.

Journalists watch a closed-circuit broadcast of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor's trial as he hears the court's verdict. Reuters

The war crimes conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor last week, by the UN-backed Special Court For Sierra Leone, sends an important message to high-ranking state officials everywhere; no matter who you are or what position you hold, you will be brought to justice for crimes. Right?

Wrong.

The truth is that Taylor is an aberration, the exception that proves the rule of a nascent international justice system that is developing in such a way as to reflect global power, not the ideals of global justice. International courts are unable to exercise jurisdiction over many of the most powerful criminals. Some domestic court systems, on the other hand, are empowered to exercise universal jurisdiction over such crimes as torture, for example in Germany, where the country's top prosecutor indicted former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, or in Switzerland, where two torture victims initiated proceedings against George W. Bush. This action has at least restricted them from travelling to these and other countries.

Taylor was convicted for "aiding and abetting" in war crimes and crimes against humanity, but this threshold is not a high one. This same standard could potentially be applied to other heads of state that might be culpable for aiding and abetting crimes within their territories or elsewhere.

That might include, for example, Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, who is alleged to support the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), which committed crimes in eastern Congo's Ituri province, or Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his support of the National Congress for the Defence of the People and its crimes in Congo's Kivu region.

16 These two central African rulers supported crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. In fact, the court secured its first-ever conviction just in March; against UPC founder Thomas Lubanga for use of child soldiers. Museveni and Kagame both heavily supported the UPC.

Yet the ICC (which is separate from the Special Court for Sierra Leone) has not indicted Museveni or Kagame. There are a few reasons, which reveal how the ICC functions and how it doesn't.

To investigate crimes within any country, the ICC needs one of three things: (1) to be invited in by a state that has signed up to it, (2) to assert jurisdiction of its own volition in a country that has signed up to it, (3) or to have its jurisdiction imposed on a state by the Security Council. Savvy leaders such as Museveni have been able to play to the ICC's dependence on state cooperation -- any exhaustive investigation would require the cooperation of the host government. So, after negotiating referral from Museveni to investigate abuses in Uganda, the ICC investigated Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, a stated U.S. target. But it has not pursued war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Ugandan Army, a U.S. ally. In 2002, a U.S. official threatened the court with obstruction if it pursued cases such as that against Museveni.

Thorough investigations require access to witnesses, documentation, crime scenes, and of course the physical apprehension of the accused. An unfriendly host government can deny all of these things.

According to Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Revolutionary United Front (a Taylor- sponsored rebel group) committed 57 percent of the crimes in Sierra Leone's war, the Sierra Leonean army (whose allegiance has changed between the RUF and the government) committed 30 percent, and government-aligned Civil Defence forces 12 percent. Only 1 per cent of crimes were committed by West African peacekeepers, although they were only present in Sierra Leone for small parts of the conflict.

The UN-backed Special Court was empowered to prosecute "those bearing the greatest responsibility" for the war's crimes. But the Special Court was barred from prosecuting British personnel that supported crimes by the Civil Defence Forces. The prosecution did not seriously investigate Sierra Leone's President, probably for fear that it would lead him to stop cooperating with other parts of their investigation. The Sierra Leonean president also seconded Sierra Leonean police officers to undertake the Special Court's investigations into crimes by the Civil Defence Forces.

The UN-backed prosecutor, according to my interviews with him and other prosecution and U.S. officials, did consider pursuing two other heads-of-state who, like Taylor, supported the RUF: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore.

Unlike the tribunals for Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, the Special Court depended on voluntary financial contributions, of which the U.S. government was the primary funder. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. government has helped lead the court's design and proposed its original prosecutor that selected cases for prosecution: former U.S. Defense Department lawyer David Crane.

At one point, when Crane came back to the U.S. government requesting funding for the court, he later told me that he was informed that, were he to indict Qaddafi or Compaore, the court would be shut down.

So why go after Charles Taylor? Taylor, after all, had established close ties with the Clinton Administration. But by 2000, opinion globally and within the U.S. had turned against Taylor, who also fought a brutal civil war within his own country. The Clinton White House financed a rebel insurgency (that also committed war crimes) against Taylor, imposed sanctions to weaken Taylor's capacity to fight back, financed internal political opposition, and helped create a war crimes court to indict him.

In other words, international justice was just one of the tools that the U.S. used to force Taylor out of office. That might have been a good thing in ousting Taylor, but it's not exactly justice or rule of law at its purest.

Nonetheless Taylor's verdict advances, incrementally, international criminal justice. If you are going to support crimes, even if you're a head of state, you had best hold on to power. If you can't, then make sure the world's great powers are supporting you, because they decide who is prosecuted, and who is not. 17 Los Angeles Times Thursday, 26 April 2012

Former prosecutor hails Charles Taylor guilty verdict

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- David M. Crane, founding prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, said Thursday’s conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity was “hugely significant.”

Taylor is the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes in an international court or hybrid international-national court since the Nuremburg trials that followed World War II.

“A very clear bell has rung across the world saying that dictators and thugs who kill their own people will be held responsible for that atrocity,” Crane said in a phone interview from The Hague.

Crane, a law professor at Syracuse University who drafted the 2003 indictment of Taylor, flew to The Hague for the verdict.

Taylor, 64, was found guilty aiding and abetting Sierra Leone rebels in 11 crimes, including murder, terrorizing civilians, rape, sexual slavery, and recruiting and using child soldiers during Sierra Leone’s bloody 1991-2002 civil war.

Crane said it sent a strong message that leaders who committed atrocities would face justice.

He predicted that Taylor would remain behind bars for the rest of his life. He said the fact that Taylor was found guilty of "aiding and abetting" the war crimes did not imply a lesser conviction than being found guilty of being in the chain of command.

“He’s been found guilty, as charged, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He’s going to get a very stiff sentence, which will amount to life imprisonment," said Crane. 18

Taylor's lawyers, who tried to have the case thrown out during the trial, argue that the case is political, designed to keep Taylor out of power in Liberia.

The former Liberian president played a role in conflict and instability across several West African countries, arming and supporting militias across the region, but Thursday’s verdict at the U.N.-backed special court relates to his role in Sierra Leone’s war, where around 50,000 people died.

Critics have questioned the Liberian government’s failure to ensure prosecution of Taylor and others for alleged war crimes in the 1989-1995 Liberian civil war which killed some 200,000. But Crane said while the international justice system was new, and wasn't perfect, justice had been done.

Taylor became president in 1997. He stepped down in 2003, several months after being indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, taking advantage of an offer of safe haven by Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obansanjo made the deal to protect Taylor from prosecution on condition he stay out of Liberian politics. But the deal was ditched after Liberian president came to power in 2005 elections and requested that Nigeria hand over Taylor to stand trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2006.

Critics in Africa have argued that repudiating Taylor’s amnesty deal has made it more difficult to remove tyrants, making them more likely to cling to power, often violently.

“It’s an important point,” said Crane. “It’s peace versus justice. Sometimes justice has to wait until there is peace. But certainly justice has to be done. At the end of the day you have to have justice because the people who suffered and saw members of their families suffer, demand it.”

The verdict was hailed by human rights organizations.

"Powerful leaders like Charles Taylor have for too long lived comfortably above the law,” said Elise Keppler of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program. “Taylor’s conviction sends a powerful message that even those in the highest-level positions can be held to account for grave crimes."

Amnesty International deputy director for Sierra Leone, Brima Abdulai Sheriff, welcomed Taylor’s conviction but said thousands of others who were criminally responsible for abuses had never been investigated or prosecuted. He said a limited number of victims had received reparations.

“This verdict can also be seen as a reminder for Taylor’s home country Liberia that those responsible for the crimes committed during Liberia’s conflict must be brought to justice,” Sheriff said in an emailed statement.

Photo: People in Freetown, Sierra Leone, watch a live broadcast Thursday of the verdict in the Netherlands-based trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Credit: Felicity Thompson / Associated Press

19 Heritage (Liberia) Wednesday, 02 May 2012

Liberia: Moses Blah Cries Over Taylor's Guilty Verdict

Moses Z. Blah, former President Charles Taylor's Vice President has said he "feels hurt" over the verdict handed down by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, Netherlands. He said: "I feel a little bit hurt and I am not happy about the whole situation. Taylor is my friend and Brother, I still respect him."

Mr. Blah, who served as a prosecution witness in the trial of his former Boss, said he did not expect that Mr. Taylor would be found guilty. Mr. Blah, also former , told the BBC Network Africa Program Tuesday morning (May 1, 2012) that his testimony in the Taylor's trial was not against his former boss (Mr. Taylor).

However, he said he testified to what he knew based on a subpoena of the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Speaking further, Mr. Blah described Mr. Taylor as his revolutionary brother who he still respects.

He said, if Taylor is set free by Appeal chamber of Special Court, he would organize a party for his former boss.

He said he would intercede for Mr. Taylor through prayers to ensure that he is set free.

On Thursday, April 26, 2012, international judges found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war.

Taylor, 64, has been on trial for almost five years. He was accused of backing rebels who killed tens of thousands during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. Taylor was convicted of 11 counts including terror, murder and rape - but cleared of ordering the crimes.

He is the first former head of state convicted by an international court since the Nuremburg military tribunal of Nazis after World War II.

The presiding judge of the Special Court Richard Lussick said the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Taylor aided and abetted rebel activities in Sierra Leone.

But defense lawyer Courtenay Griffiths told the BBC shortly after the verdict that the trial was unfair.

He maintained that the verdict of the trial judges was expected.

However in reaction, the Prosecution led by Breda Hollis said the arguments that the trial of Mr. Taylor was "politically motivated" were made several times by the defense.

Madam Hollis added that the verdict eloquently rejects these claims and assertions by the Taylor defense team and supporters. 20 The New Dawn (Liberia) Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Blah Bites Tongue: “I Was Forced to Testify”

Former President Moses Z. Blah has said that he’s feeling the blame for his predecessor Charles Taylor’s guilty verdict handed down last Thursday, 26 April after his five-year trial at The Hague.

Many Liberians, mainly supporters of the former President, blamed Blah for his testimonies before chamber II of the UN- backed Special Court of Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague.

But Blah, in a furious reaction, told the BBC on Monday that he should not be held responsible.

“Though I am feeling guilty of the verdict, but what can I do? My testimony was not to prosecute Taylor."

"Therefore, I should not be blamed,” Blah clarified, claiming to have been threatened with indictment by the court if he refused at the time to honor the invitation.

“Being that I was threatened with an arrest warrant, I was forced to go and testified, but not at my own freed mind. Because Taylor was my boss and a revolutionary brother,” the former president noted.

However, Blah said in spite of the verdict he can never divorce Taylor. “I cannot forsake Taylor as a human being and brother.” On 2 August, 2003 Taylor handed over authority of the country to Blah before going into exiled in Nigeria.

Blah was President of Liberia for 3 months (August, September & October) before handing over power to the transitional Head of State Charles . Before coming to prominent, Blah was an auto mechanic, working with LAMCO in his home county, Nimba in the north of the country.

He went into exile as a result of the 1983 ‘Nimba Raid’ under the military regime of the late Master sergeant , and was later recruited in the Ivory Coast and onto Libya for training from where he became one of the Special Forces with the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), the military wing of the US-based Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia.

The ACDL was a political organization established by exiled Liberian politician in the United States to battle the regime of M/S Doe, who they perceived as an obstacle to democracy in Liberia. Moses Blah was trained alongside other exiled Liberians at Tarjura military training camp in Libya in the 80s.

He and others, including current senator Prince Y. Johnson, alias Prince Tonic Water, led by Mr. Taylor launched the ACDL/NPFL rebellion on 24 December, 1989 against the late Samuel Doe’s regime which occasioned untold destruction and a loss of about three hundred thousand lives in Liberia, including children. 21 Angola Press Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Taylor trial a threat to Africa: family spokesman

MONROVIA - Former Liberian president Charles Taylor's conviction for aiding war crimes in Sierra Leone is a trap for all African leaders, a spokesman for the Taylor family said Tuesday.

"We believe that the trial and subsequent conviction of Mr. Taylor is a trap that has been set up for African leaders by Western leaders," Sando Johnson, a Liberian senator, told AFP in .

Taylor, 64, was found guilty by a special court in the Netherlands on April 26 of war crimes and crimes against humanity for supporting Sierra Leonean rebels in exchange for diamonds during their 10-year war.

A sentence is expected on May 30.

The Liberian politician, regarded as the Taylor family's spokesman, argued that African leaders needed to close ranks and warned that those of them tempted to reach out to Western powers would be made to regret it.

Johnson then recounted a rambling parable told by Taylor when he agreed to resign as president in August 2003 before going into exile.

The parable centred on three cows a black, a red and a white cow who befriend a lion. Having eaten up all the antelopes around, the hungry lion tells the white and red cows that they will be spared if they let him eat the black one. He repeats his trick until the white cow is left alone and gets eaten up too.

"You must be careful. Today is Charles Taylor. The black cow is going. The red cow is waiting out there," Taylor said in 2003.

Johnson argued that history had vindicated Taylor's prediction, citing the demise of Libya's Moamer Kadhafi and the downfall of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, who is awaiting trial in The Hague. 22 Angola Press Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Jury still out on international war crimes system

Washington - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's war crimes conviction may be seen in some quarters as a victory for global justice, but a backlash against costly, lengthy international tribunals is also underway.

Found guilty of aiding and abetting a host of crimes including murder, rape and torture as well as arming brutal Sierra Leonean rebels, Taylor became the first head of state to be convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two. He will be sentenced on May 30.

While Adolf Hitler avoided justice at Nuremberg by committing suicide in his Berlin bunker, his successor Admiral Karl Doenitz was convicted of crimes against the laws of war and planning a war of aggression.

Human rights groups and western governments in particular welcomed the Taylor verdict, saying it stood as a warning to others that while the wheels of justice might take a long time to turn, the age of impunity for national leaders was over.

But with the United Nations-backed "hybrid" court trial - including both international and Sierra Leonean members - taking a decade and costing an estimated $50 million, some see that as simplistic. Some put the cost of the entire Sierra Leone tribunal process at some $200 million, while British newspapers complained that plans for Taylor to serve his sentence in a British prison could cost taxpayers up to 100,000 pounds a year.

At the very least, some wonder whether the money could have been better spent in impoverished West Africa.

While Taylor's prosecution was handled by a tribunal only looking at one conflict - Sierra Leone, not the Liberian civil war in which he is also accused of mass atrocities - most more recent war crimes cases are in the hands of the International Criminal Court.

That has now issued indictments for crimes committed in six countries - Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Central African Republic, Libya and Kenya - and found itself coming under growing criticism itself. 23 The Seattle Times Tuesday, 1 May 2012 Opinion

The tenacious pursuit of war crimes and a war criminal

The long journey that brought a patron of murder and mayhem to justice is a victory for human rights, human dignity and legal authority.

By Mason C. MORE

FORMER Liberian President Charles Taylor is scheduled to be sentenced next month. His conviction on 11 counts of aiding and abetting a bloody civil war in Sierra Leone offers a grim punishment option: short sleeves or long sleeves?

Such was the cruel, maniacal choice given by rebels to men, women and children on where their limbs would be hacked off: at the elbow or the wrist.

Raw vengeance would never be as satisfying as the pursuit, capture and international legal proceedings against a tyrant once so supremely confident of his own invulnerability.

The message from the International Criminal Court is that those despots and oppressors engaging in war crimes will be held accountable. The demonstrated tenacity that followed Taylor after he went into exile in 2003, continued through his arrest in 2006 and ended with last week's verdict is extraordinary.

Taylor swapped weapons for diamonds with rebels in Sierra Leone, and helped sustain a malicious upheaval for 11 years that claimed 50,000 lives. Taylor came to power in Liberia in 1989 via another bloody civil war that killed 200,000 over more than a decade.

The ruling, issued by the Special Court for Sierra Leone from the trial's secure venue in the Netherlands, has been cheered around the world, including in the African media. Broad hints are dropped about who might be next.

CNN reported William Hague, Britain's foreign minister, suggested Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has brutally suppressed dissent, might pay attention to what transpired with Taylor.

The central message is that the world paid attention. Africa was not too remote to register on the international conscience. Dedicated, purposeful people acted to enforce the law. 24 AllAfrica.Com Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Africa: On the Charles Taylor Verdict - Is There Justice in Africa?

By Michael Keating

The conviction of Charles Taylor is certainly some kind of justice. Many in Sierra Leone will feel that their suffering has been acknowledged by the international community. In Liberia many others will rejoice while some will grumble that Taylor, the Liberian "patriot", is just a victim of white man's justice.

Given the tsunami of suffering that Taylor unleashed upon West Africa, the overly constrained proceedings in the Hague are really more like a show trial, a demonstration of Western judicial power rather than a real exploration of the facts and figures surrounding the series of events that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives across the region.

For most of the world the narrative is simple: Charles Taylor = blood diamonds + child soldiers + limb chopping = war criminal. Fair enough. That case was made.

What was missing from the dock in the Hague, as opposed to say the Nuremberg Trials, are the countless other personalities and political entrepreneurs that animated many of the events that to the West seemed more like antics in a Hobbesian charnel house than acts of sovereign states.

Whether or not one believes that it was the CIA that engineered Taylor's escape from prison in Massachusetts (which many in Monrovia firmly swear to) it is certainly the case that the Reagan-era State Department was displeased with Samuel Doe. After showering Doe with money in the first years of his reign, American diplomats looked on aghast as Doe turned into an embarrassing kleptocrat. It was also after Doe's rigged elections in 1985 that Liberians in exile, many in the United States, began plotting to get rid of Doe by any means necessary.

Those means were provided by U.S. educated Taylor who had one time worked in the Doe regime but who had to flee Liberia after being accused of embezzlement. It was on those charges that Taylor was imprisoned in the U.S. while awaiting an extradition hearing.

At that point the young idealist Taylor no doubt viewed himself as a liberator. He would launch a counter- revolution against Doe. In order to do so he would first have to get arms, money and rear echelon support. Taylor and his partner Prince Johnson -- who sits in the Liberian Senate to this day -- travelled to Burkina Faso and assisted the coup that assassinated the popular Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara- the so-called Che Guevara of Africa- in exchange for support of their own coup plans against Doe. Taylor was also invited to Libya to meet with Gaddafi and was given financial and tactical support in the context of Gaddafi's own pan-African hallucinations.

When Taylor finally launched his incursion from friendly Cote d'Ivoire in 1989 all the stars were aligned in his favour, including the support of current Liberian President Sirleaf. Unfortunately, he had the resources to launch his campaign but neither a disciplined revolutionary party nor a competent officer corps to carry it forward. Instead he had an undisciplined armed mob and a group of associates who quickly turned on each other when it was clear that the liberation of Liberia would be a winner-take-all affair.

By the time he became the elected President of an exhausted and terrorized Liberia in 1997, Taylor had succumbed to all the ills that befall a dictator. He had ruled his personal catchments called "Greater Liberia" with a toxic combination of terror and patronage.

His frustration in not being able to capture Monrovia -- due to blocking manoeuvres from other West African nations -- only fuelled his megalomania and greed. This led him to start selling off large swatches of precious hardwood forests to greedy European buyers. He also began supporting monsters like Foday Sankoh in next door Sierra Leone whose access to diamonds provided Taylor with a virtual bloody ATM machine. There is no doubt that the insanity he unleashed had begun to affect him. However, he always put on a good face for foreign visitors. 25 One was the Rev. Jesse Jackson who came as Clinton's special envoy and supposedly tried to make the dubious case that both Taylor and the madman Sankoh were worthy of American support. Another was the Rev. Pat Robertson of 700 Club fame who allegedly came to Taylor's Liberia looking for diamonds in exchange for lobbying President Bush on Taylor's behalf. In the end, Taylor became increasingly erratic with rumors of secret rituals and even cannibalism swirling around his inner circle.

It was at this point that Islam also emerged in the conflict. One of Taylor's most serious miscalculations was his oppression of the Mandingos, an Islamic ethnic group spread out across several West African countries including neighboring Guinea. It was Guinea, with help from Nigeria, that supplied Liberian-Mandingo leaders like Alhaji Kromah - now a professor of mass communications at the University of Liberia - with money, weapons and logistical support in his quest to topple Taylor from his presidential perch. It was a mirror scenario to the one which aided Taylor a decade before.

Ironically, it has been suggested that Taylor's conflict diamonds helped finance several Al Queda operations, one of which may have been 9/11. Taylor should be happy he's imprisoned in the Netherlands. The U.S. would probably like to see him in Guantanamo.

So what are we left with in the Taylor judgment? Robin White, the former BBC journalist who covered the events in question, told the BBC that he felt the money that went to the prosecution - reportedly $50 Million -- should have been given to amputees in Sierra Leone instead, many of whom are living in abject poverty.

What about Taylor's victims in Liberia, what satisfaction do they get? Taylor's millions are still rolling around the international banking system with no serious efforts afoot to capture them for the benefit of the Liberian people.

Unlike the Nazis who obsessively and absurdly documented all of their crimes and thus handed their prosecutors an airtight case, the trial of Charles Taylor has left out of the record much more than it revealed. To say that western understanding of Africa is based on cliché and disinformation is an understatement. That same might be said of prosecutions of Africans in Western courts, both present and future.

Taylor will likely die in prison. His son, the infamous "Chuckie" Taylor will do so as well. Many of his family and former cronies are now wealthy businessmen and influential politicians in Liberia, even though several of them remain under a U.N. travel ban. Neither of the reverends Jackson nor Robertson will likely see the inside of a jail cell for having consorted with a convicted war criminal.

Like all would-be revolutionaries, Taylor unleashed the forces of unintended consequences. One of the most remarkable was that it was his doings in Sierra Leone that brought him down, not his destruction of Liberia. The other was that with his incarceration, most of the other unquestionably guilty will rest more comfortably in their freedom.

Until Africans take control of their own justice, it will be an expensive dog's breakfast indeed.

Michael Keating is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston with a special interest in the Mano River countries of West Africa. 26 BBC Focus on Africa Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Moses Blah on the Judgement of Charles Taylor

LEAD-IN: …Taylor is still the subject of plenty of debate around the world. Closer to home, in Liberia, Moses Blah, Taylor’s former vice president, has been expressing regrets about the trial. Mr. Blah gave testimony in 2008 which pointed to some evidence of the recruitment of child soldiers. So how does he feel, now that Charles Taylor has been found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone? Our reporter Jonathan Paye-Layleh put this question to Mr. Blah.

BLAH: As a human being, I felt somehow bad because this is a fellow who has been my chief, my boss, even though he has not been sentenced he has been jailed for a very long time. I feel a little bit hurt. I am not happy about the whole situation.

When you were leaving Liberia for The Hague to testify in the Taylor trial, you referred to him as a revolutionary brother that you would not betray, but what was said didn’t look like something that was sad towards a revolutionary brother.

BLAH: He is still my revolutionary brother. Taylor is my friend and brother. We fought the revolution together and I still respect him as a chief. I did not go to The Hague by my own power. I did not go willingly to say let me go and prosecute my brother. It was subpoena power that ordered me to go to The Hague.

You were subpoenaed by the court.

BLAH: Yes, subpoenaed by the court to go to The Hague. I must go to this court to testify. If I don’t, then I will go to where he is – that is what the letter said. I can show you the paper now that was written to me.

So the Special Court said in a subpoena that if you didn’t go you would find yourself in trouble.

BLAH: Yeah. They said if I don’t, that if I refuse to go, they will make me to go to testify and I would find myself in bigger trouble. What I said was not against him, and still I’m not against him.

But your testimony pointed to some involvement by him in the Sierra Leonean crisis.

BLAH: No, I never had it go against. And I went to The Hague and prepared to say exactly what I know when I was vice president in his government.

When you were walking out of the premises of the court after your testimony, did you ever expect that Taylor was going to be found guilty?

BLAH: No, I did not, because I didn’t go to prosecute him. I went to say exactly what I knew. It’s left to the court to decide. That’s what I said in court.

If Taylor and his lawyers take the matter to the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court, two things are possible. Either he’s found guilty to be sitting in a British jail, or he returns back to Liberia. If he comes back, will you be scared?

BLAH: Not at all. I will be happy to see him. I will really rejoice, I may have a party for him if he comes back. I will receive him as a boss to me.

If he’s found guilty and he’s put in jail, what reflection will you have for him?

BLAH: That would not make me happy. I pray to the Lord that he’s set free to go to his family to be a happy man once again.

Liberia’s former Deputy President Moses Blah, speaking with Jonathan Paye-Layleh.